Dusty Rainbows
by SammyQuill
Summary: For years, people have tried to determine where the rainbow touches the ground but you know the truth. It never does. Yes, you are the dust and she the unreachable spectrum of light. Written for the Poe challenge on kakasaku LJ comm.


**Author's Rant:** Firstly, happy lunar new year everyone, and for all those Chinese out there – Gong Xi Fa Chai!

I'm sorry I'm not writing a happier piece for the festivities but this is not really written for the holiday. It's written for the Poe Challenge being hosted on the Kakashi X Sakura community on LJ and I chose to write for the prompt "An Ether of Sighs". I'm pretty sure I screwed up because I don't even know if I interpreted the prompt right but if I get virtually sued, I can always claim creative licensing privileges.

As this is my last entry for the contest, I would like to dedicate it to all the hard working participants and hosts of this wonderful challenge, even those who did not make it to the final round. You ladies have got some serious writing going on; your talents never cease to amaze me.

Finally, no beta was bugged in the making of this fic and as a result, you might find grammar/punctuation inconsistencies. So if you want to tell me how you liked it or even just want to yell at me for depressing you, leave a review.

**Dusty Rainbows**

The procession looks like a sea of black from where you're standing, away from the crowd as always. You watch the mourners walk in silence, the Head Jounin and the village elders leading the party, bearing the coffin. Had it been this quiet at the Sandaime's funeral too? You remember lots of black, you remember stony expressions, you remember tears too but you haven't cried in a long time. Maybe you've seen too many funerals to care?

Towards the front of the party, you see a small splash of color, trying it's best to be seen against the bleak backdrop of the darkly clad mourners and the stormy skies. On bright sunny days, the patch of color would have stood out brilliantly, but today it simply looked faded, washed out against all the gloominess it was surrounded by.

Her eyes had looked faded too, as she had gone over the papers certifying her shishou dead. And you have a horrible feeling that the sparkle you were so used to by now – against your will but you digress – would never light them up again. The thought of the young kunoichi never laughing with her eyes causes you physical pain, but you tell yourself it is merely the pain of losing yet another person you had admired and respected. You are at a funeral after all; pangs of sorrow, guilt, and utter self loathing should be common on such occasions.

You continue to watch the procession heading to the area behind the famed Konoha Cenotaph, where all the Hokage had been buried after their fall to protect the village. The Godaime going the same way should not have been a surprise, didn't Jiraiya always joke about how all Hokage had the tendency to die on the job?

Still, you doubt those were the words she wanted to hear, uttered so bitterly from behind your mask that they left her breathless. Why had you been such an idiot, why had you failed to notice that she was barely holding her tears in check? Why did you… why did you ever fall in love with her in the first place?

Yes, now that you think about it, that was when the problem had started, wasn't it? Other shinobi might call you cynical but you do not believe in love – or rather, that love could ever lead to anything but pain and more pain. Look at all the grand examples standing before your closed eyes. Jiraiya, who had loved only one women since he was a genin had never said a word, Tsunade, who had given her heart to someone who didn't possess a heart in the first place, Asuma, now gone off to some faraway place while Kurenai struggles to raise his son, Itachi, dead, killed by the one he loved the most… Yes, as soon as you had realized you had a little something more than purely platonic feelings for your former student, you had done the right thing and started avoiding the temptation. You had gone out of your way to not bump into her, to be busy when she needed a sparring partner, to be conveniently absent when her best friend died…

And still, for some remarkable reason, she had not hated you. She had been curious and hurt when you were never around, she admitted as much. But she had never despised you for shutting her out. She had waited for you, making yourself hate the man you saw in the mirror morning after morning, the man with the pale face and messy hair who had no right to breathe, to love someone as vibrant and alive as she was. Because you knew, you just _knew_ – it was written in the way she smiled at you tentatively if she ever saw you hurrying in the opposite direction, it was stated calmly in the way she never asked anything of you – that she loved you too. And this, perhaps more than anything else, made you loath what you had become. Were you really so cold and unattached that you couldn't offer comfort to a young girl after her master had been killed in battle, a master who had been the closest thing to a mother the medic had ever had?

But isn't that how things start? Isn't that how people start getting closer, through tragedy? And you would never let that happen, you would never let yourself get closer to her because you were the very heart of darkness, you were the heavy coat of onyx that would smother her brightness. It wasn't as if the world hadn't done a fine job of it already, but you can't stand the idea of the last flicker of life leaving her eyes because of you.

You remember her gasp all too clearly, the way she had let her breath out in horror when you had joked bitterly about the Hokage's death. You wish she'd have slapped you, or even stormed out. Because the sight of her nearly brimming irises had hurt far worse than you had expected it to.

You open your eyes wearily and try to focus on the procession again. The rain has started, as is tradition when it comes to a funeral. An old village legend states that the sky itself mourns the death of a good shinobi and you sometimes wonder how many times there can be coincidental rain on the day of a funeral or if an ANBU member particularly skilled with water jutsu is in charge of that particular special effect.

Perhaps it's the falling rain obscuring your view or perhaps the sea of darkness is too suffocating, but you can't see the pink mop of hair anymore. Something clenches around your heart painfully as your lone eye widens, trying it's best to detect even the dullest hint of the color that is now lost from your vision.

For a moment, you want to rush over there, you want to find her and hold her to you, and tell her to never lose her bright sparkle, the thing that sets her apart from everyone else in this world, this universe, but you know you can't. You shouldn't, because it would be redundant really. So you stand where you are, squinting through the rain as best you can and knowing that even if you do see the faded pastel shade against the grey and black, you will do absolutely nothing to preserve it. Only she can do it, and she does not need your help.

As you stand there, trying to make out the pinprick figures that now appear similar to the dark clouds gathered above them, you know two things for certain. Not too much later, you too will disappear into this colorless oblivion and become one with the dust and bones beneath your feet that go into making this village. And that you will _not _drag her with you. Because when she dies, her color will not join the ever present gloom, it will form the rainbow that comes after the storm is over. And everyone knows that rainbows never truly touch the ground anyway.


End file.
